LATE IN THE DAY

Tout Quarry

Tout Quarry is an abandoned stone quarry in Portland, Dorset. It is situated on the cliff edge overlooking the sea, with Chesil Beach as its backdrop.  Portland has been described as the womb of London because so many of London's buildings are made from the stone quarried there. Wren was a particular fan of the stone and used it in the rebuilding of St Paul's Cathedral and the numerous churches that were rebuilt after the Great Fire.

Tout Quarry is now a sculpture park, formed in 1983 with the creation of the Portland Sculpture and Quarry Trust. A large group of site specific sculptures have been created in the quarry, but as the park is easily accessible to the public at all times of day these sculptures have been vulnerable to vandalism, as well as the weather.

We took a trip here when recently in Dorset. We dumped the car on double yellow lines in a cul de sac leading nowhere, surrounded by faintly menacing portacabins and industrial sheds of no specific purpose. The first set of sculptures appear on your left as you head down the hill into the park. There are no explanatory boards or interpretation materials that you might expect from such a project. In fact, the site appears almost as a waste land. However, trawling online suggests that new work is being commissioned for the Olympics.

To us it seemed a place devoid of human agency. Fragments of sculpture emerge from the pale stone. Some sculptures have clearly been damaged but others seem half formed. As you move down into the basin of the quarry you are fully surrounded by the white stone and more pieces appear. We found ourselves intrigued by the site, its seeming dereliction, and its unrealness, somewhere between a film set and an alien landscape. It felt like a place where furtive secret activity occurs, and we found little stashes of cans, drug paraphernalia and endless piles of dog shit. The site is clearly used by someone but we didn't see a soul when we were there.

Live on Resonance FM

  

Less than twelve hours after playing our Tate Britain processional piece, we were in another gallery, this time Home Front in Herne Hill. We had been very kindly asked to perform live as part of a special outside broadcast for the Hello Goodbye show's 10th birthday.  Click on the image above for the live recording, which includes a few of the tracks we performed at Tate.

Home Front made us very welcome and liberally bestowed us with croissants and home brewed ales from their Spit and Sawdust geodesic dome.

Thank you to everyone who made this possible, we had a really fun time and were super pleased with the resulting session. Special thanks to all of the Resonance engineers in attendance. I will leave it to you to decide what the plural is for a group of Resonance engineers. And happy birthday to Hello Goodbye, who have been supportive of us for many years now (even as far back as the Hands on Heads days!).

DEAREST KIRSTY

We recorded this version of 'A New England' for a forthcoming Belly Kids compilation, also featured are Halo Halo, Keel Her, Human Hair, Cow Town, Gold Bars and Sauna Youth amongst more interpreting favourite songs! Out June 25th and accompanied with a fanzine of artwork including this fetching cross-stitch Kate with Hound by Reena Makwana.

KIT'S COTY

We looked everywhere to find Kit's Coty.  First we found the picnic area on Blue Bell Hill with it's eager dogs belting out of hatchbacks. A heavily-faded map, sweating behind a plastic glass frame seemed to indicate we were nearby. We then stumbled upon the brasserie which had borrowed it's name and seemingly all signposts, a couple in a flagged-down car had only heard of said restaurant so that lead went cold. After stumbling down steep paths to nowhere and traversing a dangerous triangle of speeding traffic, chalk quarries and the muddied pathways of North Downs walkers, we struck up a hopeful track until an unmistakable stack of sarsen stones huddled over the horizon. Dating from around 3500 BC, Kit's Coty is the most impressive of the Medway Megaliths and a very rare example of a dolmen for the South East. Now only the burial entrance remains of the neolithic long barrow, the rest having been ploughed up and dumped on the periphery of the field. However the colossal capstone and engraved uprights are pockmarked with time and blasted with much grandeur, making the protective railings which surround it more of a cage to contain it. Some graffiti on the centre stone informs us that "Tim HEARTS Chloe", although she is "smelly" according to an additional witness. Kit's Coty derives it's name from the Ancient British for "tomb in the forest", once it held it's secrets in the chequered shade, now it shirks in the open farmland, waiting to be released.

BACUP

  

BACUP

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You are “here today!”

Amongst the community furniture

And affordable websites

Red, white and blue garlands

Seven dances in disguise

Medicine on their feet

Muddy ridge backing onto the valley

Prosperity through endeavour

Pallid makeup and dyed hair

Nutters stamp out decaying circles

Wagging fingers in faces

Whilst the South Pennine

Open moors moon down on…

Rosettes and ritual

TATE PROCESSIONAL

Hello again!
This Friday we're doing a special performance at Tate Britain. We'll be performing a fragmented Way Through set; beginning, ending and interrupted by a number of processional pieces especially conceived for this project. During the performance we will roam the gallery floors visiting artworks by Samuel Palmer, Paul Nash, Richard Long and J.M.W. Turner to name a few whilst performing "processional music". We will also be interacting with Patrick Keiller's new exhibition 'The Robinson Institute' in the Duveen Gallery.

The event is entirely FREE and takes place from 6pm with Hello Goodbye curating a lively evening of music, performance and dance.

Our performance of "Tate Processional" will take place between 7.30pm - 8.30pm.
See you there!
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